


dust from the bones

by valkyriered



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Shiro (Voltron) Has PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-19
Updated: 2017-03-19
Packaged: 2018-10-08 00:46:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10374000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valkyriered/pseuds/valkyriered
Summary: Shiro tries to re-inhabit his body. Ulaz helps. (It sounds like porn, it's not. Rated for vaguely sexy stuff and some blood.)





	

What happened to Shiro is something that only Shiro knows, and he guards the knowledge with everything he has. They all carefully dance around it, averting their eyes when they see his scars or pointedly avoid discussing his flashbacks. It’s something that he holds close to his chest and does not talk about, and they all do their best to respect that.  
  
They don’t even say it, really. They only have vague knowledge of what happened, so when referencing it it’s referred to as “What the Galra did,” or, more commonly, just “What happened to Shiro.” Like it had been an accident, or a mistake.  
  
Nobody really knows the details. They know, vaguely, about the gladiator-like battles. They’ve seen the scars and the Galra arm is obvious enough. But the little details— they’re totally missing. They don’t know the exact reason why Shiro jerks so violently when someone touches him without him seeing them coming. They don’t know why he’ll sometimes vomit after missions aboard Galra ships, or what makes him scream at night.  
  
Or rather, they do. They know that Bad Things happened to him aboard the Galra ship, but his scars and arm offer no hints or specific answers. The worst is that he probably doesn’t know either, that he looks at the map of scars across his body and _does not know_ what happened to him.  
  
So when Ulaz appears, when he mysteriously survives what should have crushed him, Shiro latches onto him with a ferocity that none of them had seen before. They should have realized, though. Shiro’s quiet desperation to find out what was done to him, to his body, finally has a target.  
  
They talk often. Shiro has mountains of questions and Ulaz has nothing to hide and willingly answers every single one. After Shiro had suffered so much at the hands of his captors, it’s not Ulaz’s right to deny him answers. They sit in the lounge and talk quietly, Shiro hunched over but dry-eyed.  
  
They start going over the scars. Ulaz is patient with him, sits while Shiro points to the scars on his remaining arm, asking about each one. He asks about the one stretching across his nose, the one on his throat, on his jaw. He asks about when his hair went white. Lance and Hunk manage to walk in on Shiro standing in front of Ulaz, pulling up his shirt and unzipping his pants. They flush and splutter until Shiro tugs down the band of his pants to show them the strange, shiny, tree-like scar on his hip. Ulaz tells him he was electrocuted.  
  
He learns about his own body slowly, methodically cataloguing skin inch by unfamiliar inch. There are some scars that Ulaz doesn’t remember or wasn’t present for, but they’re few and far between. It’s Ulaz that finally, blissfully, tells him the extent of Haggar’s experiments on him. (The ones that he knows of, that is. There are some that he wasn’t present for, that still remain a nightmarish mystery.)  
  
It feels strange to finally acknowledge the scars. He’s spent so much time averting his eyes when he undresses that to look at them— to _really, actually_ look at them— is almost frightening. It’s accepting that this is what his skin looks like, that what the Galra did to him was done to _him_ , to his body, that he’s the same exact person that was imprisoned and suffering, that the past year wasn’t a strange dream. His nightmares become more intense then ever, vivid re-imaginings of what Ulaz told him. He can’t tell if he’s remembering or if it’s his mind desperately trying to supply some of what was lost. He hates the Galra more and more— he always has, but it suddenly becomes intensely personal and deeply vulnerable.  
  
He screams at Ulaz. He shrieks and rages and demands to know why he wasn’t saved sooner, why they didn’t protect him sooner, why they waited for a year to pass before finally setting him free. Ulaz doesn’t say anything— he just watches impassively as Shiro rails against him, hissing and spitting and cursing him for letting him suffer. Shiro doesn’t ask about his scars anymore because it makes what happened to him frighteningly real. He doesn’t want to know about the experiments because it makes him sick.  
  
Talking turns into sparring, and it’s a sweet relief that Shiro can finally fight against someone without worrying about seriously injuring them. Ulaz is fast and strong and more than a match for him, and they fight silently and brutally. They only stop when one of them is limping or bleeding too heavily to ignore. (And more often than not, it’s Shiro.) He enjoys the aching in his muscles and bones. He likes watching bruises bloom over old scars.  
  
His fascination with his own skin gets a little strange, and he begins to wish he’d never opened the Pandora’s box in the first place. “Stop that.” Ulaz murmurs, watching Shiro scratch incessantly at a shallow cut he’d gotten from sparring the other day. “You are going to open it up.”  
  
“Okay.” Shiro says, on autopilot, and watches as it splits open and blood wells up and spills down his leg.  
  
The cut ends up scarring over because Shiro won’t leave it alone, but he doesn’t mind. He’d rather every old scar get covered by a new one. He wants to be a new monster, freshly reborn, skin gilded with a map of scars until he can’t even remember what he used to look like. He lets Ulaz land blow after blow on him, enjoying the thrill of watching the new cuts bisect old scar tissue. He picks them open, and Ulaz says nothing. He gets more aggressive as they spar. Ulaz still says nothing.  
  
Shiro breaks Ulaz’s nose, and he gives a vicious grin through the blood spilling down his face and chin. He slams Shiro’s head against the floor until his ears are ringing, and Shiro smiles back. After their fights they scrub at the dark blood spattered across the training mats. Shiro flips them over to hide the stains.  
  
It makes sense, really. Shiro had only ever seen Galra at their most bloodthirsty and vicious. Maybe he brings it out in them, he thinks as he digs his teeth into Ulaz’s throat. Maybe he’s sick, and dark, and they can’t help themselves. Maybe every scar on him is just evidence of his own thirst for violence. He pins Ulaz to the floor, climbing onto his chest and watching with dark eyes as he wraps his hands around Ulaz’s throat. Ulaz looks up at him, but makes no move to push Shiro off, even as he squeezes harder. He makes a soft choking noise, saliva foaming up and spilling down his cheek, but he keeps his hands at his side, watching Shiro the whole time. Shiro breathes hard, sweat dripping down his face as Ulaz’s eyes begin to slip shut. He wants to stop, but his hands seem glued, his arms frozen. Ulaz’s head lolls to the side, and the spell is broken. Shiro suddenly jerks his hands back, not moving from where he sits on his chest, his eyes laser-focused as he waits for Ulaz to come to.  
  
Ulaz stirs quickly, pale yellow eyes slowly blinking open to regard Shiro. “You did well.” He says, wiping at the mess of saliva dripping down his cheek before dropping his hand to rest on Shiro’s thigh. “Are you done?”  
  
Shiro stares down at Ulaz. “Why did you let me do that?”  
  
“Do what?”  
  
“Why did you let me choke you. You could’ve thrown me off.”  
  
“It seemed important to you.”  
  
“To choke you?” Shiro says incredulously.  
  
“You were angry.”  
  
Shiro flushes and tucks his head into his chest. “I don’t— it’s not—“  
  
Ulaz squeezes Shiro’s thigh experimentally. “I do not mind providing certain things to you.”  
  
“You let me strangle you.”  
  
“And I am fine.” Ulaz says, as impassive as ever. A thought suddenly occurs to Shiro.  
  
“Do you even _like_ what we do?” Shiro asks.  
  
Ulaz blinks slowly up at Shiro from where he lays back against the mat. “I am not accustomed to fighting like this. I was taught to fight with agility and a blade, not with my teeth and fists, like animals do.”  
  
Shiro’s breath caught in his throat. “Then why do you do it?”  
  
“I was under the impression it was what you wanted.”  
  
Shiro chokes, feeling his heart drop suddenly. The world spins around him, tilting on its axis as he tries to breathe past the pounding in his ears. _I did this to him. He did this because I’m violent, because I’m sick, because—_  
  
“Shiro?” Ulaz has both hands on his thighs now, squeezing them gently.  
  
“I didn’t—“ Shiro shies away from him, curling in on himself. “ _Fuck_ , Ulaz, don’t do that for me.”  
  
“You do not want to fight?”  
  
“No, it’s— if you don’t want to do something, then don’t do it! Don’t fight if you don’t want to!”  
  
Ulaz looks at him for a moment. “You are not forcing me to fight, Shiro. This is not like the arena.”  
  
Shiro shudders. “I don’t want to make you like me.”  
  
“It would be an honor to be like you.”  
  
“I’m violent. I _want_ to hurt people like this.” He reaches out tentatively to touch the bite mark he’d left on Ulaz’s throat. It’s still bleeding sluggishly, and it must sting, but Ulaz doesn’t flinch when he makes contact with it.  
  
“You are angry.” Ulaz corrects. “You have every right to be.”  
  
“I don’t want to be.” Shiro begins to withdraw his hand, but Ulaz reaches up and catches his wrist, lowering it to rest on his chest.  
  
“I am sorry.” He says, looking up at Shiro. “I see how much pain you are in. I wish that we had freed you sooner.”  
  
Shiro swallows, takes a shaky breath. He doesn’t blame Ulaz for his imprisonment. Or at least, he tries not to. Yet still, hearing it said out loud leaves him a little unsteady. “You don’t have to apologize for that. When I was yelling— I was angry, I didn’t mean what I said.”  
  
“You are right to resent me. I allowed you to suffer when you did not need to.”  
  
“I don’t resent you.”  
  
Ulaz looks doubtful, but nods anyways. “Still. I am grateful that you survived. I am grateful for you to have made it so far.”  
  
Shiro flushes and looks down at his hands. He slips his flesh hand out of Ulaz’s gentle grasp, pulls it in towards himself. “We should clean up.”  
  
Ulaz nods again, but makes no move to remove his hand from where it’s gripping Shiro’s thigh. In the end, Shiro reaches down and removes his hand from his thigh, ignoring the way his claws brush at the sensitive skin there, and the way his own face flushes at the feeling.  
  
Shiro won’t fight Ulaz anymore, but they transition so easily to touching each other in different ways. They’re both hyper-aware of how private their relationship with each other is. When they were fighting, it was always a secret. It wouldn’t do well to have the other residents of the ship seeing them tear each other apart. Even when Ulaz was telling Shiro about what was done to him, they did so in private. So it makes sense that their touching is private, too, that they barely even brush against each other when they’re around the others.  
  
But alone, they’re glued to each other. They’re constantly leaning against each other as they read or work, and Ulaz regularly examines Shiro’s body as though he were looking at a particularly fascinating piece of artwork. Shiro would be uncomfortable with the intensity of his gaze, if not for how gently Ulaz touches him while doing it. He becomes used to stripping down to his boxers and a tank top before spending time with Ulaz, if only to avoid having to take his clothes off after getting comfortable. (Not to mention how nice it is to actually have someone touching his bare skin for once.) Shiro would lean against his pillows, a pad in his lap, while Ulaz explores his scars and skin. “And this is?” Ulaz asks one evening, looking expectantly at Shiro.  
  
“Uh. There isn’t really a word for that that I know of.”  
  
“Really?”  
  
“Behind the knee, I guess.”  
  
Ulaz snorts. “Clearly. I mean the way the skin folds.” He says, running his fingers along the tendons on either side.  
  
“I don’t think there’s a word for that. You could ask Pidge, maybe.”  
  
Ulaz shrugs, obviously not intending to do that at all. He continues his explorations, his fingers gently running up his knees, his thighs.  
  
Shiro inhales sharply as his fingertips brush his inner thighs. “Careful. That’s, erm. An erogenous zone.”  
  
Ulaz pauses. “Should I stop?”  
  
It’s a loaded question. Shiro chews on his lip. “You can keep going.” He decides, now only half-focused on his book.  
  
“Are all humans sensitive here?”  
  
“Maybe. Probably some more than others.” He says, watching as Ulaz rubs his thumbs against the soft skin there.  
  
“Are you?”  
  
Shiro swallows. “Yes.”  
  
Ulaz nods, continuing to explore the area almost reverently. “You are softer here.” He decides. Shiro watches him run his fingers over old, swollen scars. Even with the evidence of his past spattered across his skin, Ulaz manages to look at him incredibly tenderly. Shiro gazes down at him, enjoying the sudden rush of affection.  
  
“You are smiling.”  
  
“I’m happy.” Shiro says, letting the pad fall to the wayside. He reaches down, tracing over one of his newer, fresher scars that Ulaz had given him. It’s still angry and red from Shiro scratching it open over and over. He digs his nails into it again.  
  
“I wish you would not do that.”  
  
Shiro stills. “It’s my body.” He says defensively, as if he’s expecting Ulaz to say something to the contrary.  
  
“It is.” Ulaz agrees, but he’s being soothing, placating. He runs a hand over to where Shiro’s picking at his skin. “I do not enjoy seeing you hurt yourself.”  
  
“It doesn’t hurt.”  
  
“You’re tearing your skin, is it not painful?”  
  
“It’s not— listen, it’s not that bad.”  
  
“Why do you do it?”  
  
“I don’t want to talk about it.” Shiro says, drawing away from Ulaz. “It’s not your place to lecture me.”  
  
“Okay.” Ulaz pulls his hands away slowly, like he’s calming a frightened animal.  
  
“It’s _my_ body.”  
  
“I know, Shiro.”  
  
“It doesn’t matter. If it bothers you, or if it doesn’t. It’s _mine_. You can’t— tell me what to do with it.” Shiro digs his nails deeper into the cut, his voice pitching higher as he gets more worked up.  
  
“I am not going to. Shiro, please breathe.”  
  
“It’s mine.” He gasps, his breath catching. “Oh god. It’s my body. This is— my _body_.” Something heavy clicks into place, and the realization is terrifying. This is his body— the one that he was born with, the one that has housed him his entire life. The one that the Galra twisted up and marked and destroyed. What happened to his body in the arena happened to him, the scars happened to him, the broken bones and missing arm.  
  
“Shiro?”  
  
“This is what I look like now. Oh—“ Shiro gags. “Oh god.” He says, eyes roaming across his legs, over to his metal arm as if he’s seeing it for the first time. He flexes the fingers, watches as they respond. _This is me. This is actually me._  
  
“Can I touch you?” Ulaz asks. He’s seen Shiro angry, and panicked, and frightened, but this is something entirely different. He’s never encountered this side of Shiro before, manic and overwhelmed.  
  
“I don’t know.” Shiro’s hands shake as he runs them through his hair, down his heaving chest. “I don’t think I want anyone to touch me ever again.” The idea of anyone touching him repulses him. Nobody gets to touch him if he doesn’t want them to. He’ll kill them.  
  
“That is fine.” Ulaz says, trying to placate him. “Shiro, you need to calm down.”  
  
“I’m fine. I’m okay.” He says, wild-eyed as he looks down at his skin. “I’m just—“ He lets out a wild laugh. “I feel strange.” Like he’s waking up for the first time. Like he hasn’t felt anything real in a long time.  
  
“You’re not breathing.”  
  
“It was real. What they did— actually happened to me.” Shiro takes a deep breath this time, and Ulaz relaxes. It’s shaky, but at least he’s breathing. That’s a step up.  
  
“It did.” He confirms. He wants to reach out and touch Shiro, but with him being so fragile right now— it would be unwise.  
  
“I think I’m going to be sick.”  
  


  
The bathrooms are close, and when Shiro collapses to his knees to retch into the toilet, Ulaz sits down next to him, leaning against the tiled wall. The bathroom is quiet except for the gentle thrum of the castle, and the occasional noise of Shiro spitting into the toilet.  
  
“You have been very brave.” Ulaz says quietly. “And very strong.”  
  
Shiro looks up at him, a wry smile spreading across his face. “I don’t feel like I have.” He says. Something about kneeling over a toilet and vomiting doesn’t strike him as a particularly brave act. The panicked feeling is waning now, and without the adrenaline of it he feels tired and vulnerable.  
  
Ulaz looks over at him, his face dead serious. “You have survived what many would not. You have been able to smile despite it. That is a very powerful thing.”  
  
Shiro shies away from the sudden heaviness of the situation. “You’ve helped me through a lot of this. I’m grateful.” He clears his throat, wipes at his mouth with the back of his hand. He sneaks a look up at Ulaz. “Thank you. For everything.”  
  
“I am glad to have been of service.” Ulaz says, still looking intently at him. “And with your permission, I would like to continue to be.”  
  
Shiro flushes. For someone that comes off as very uptight, Ulaz can be awfully declarative at times. “You don’t need to— be of service to me.” He looks down at his hands. “But it’s nice to have you around. Near me.”  
  
Ulaz’s face softens, and he nods. “Then I will be.”  
  
It’s probably a weird place to have a moment like this. But there’s nothing about their relationship with each other that has ever been particularly normal. Shiro slides his hand across the tile, reaching out in a careful offer.  
  
Ulaz takes his hand.  
  
It’s strange to be touched when he’s this sensitive. It feels more intimate. Ulaz is incredibly gentle as he folds his fingers around Shiro’s.  
  
“Is this okay?” Ulaz asks.  
  
“Yeah.” Shiro says. “It’s okay.”

**Author's Note:**

> oh my god this fic was a bitch and a half to write
> 
> title comes from "Body of years" by mother mother
> 
> follow me for more voltron bs at queenvallkyrie.tumblr.com


End file.
